


✧ i’ll stay in your memory (even without a name)

by estim8te



Category: Dreamcatcher (Korea Band)
Genre: Angst, Character Death In Dream, Curses, Guns, Magic, Memories, Mental Anguish, Mental Link, Sad, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:46:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25557553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/estim8te/pseuds/estim8te
Summary: Minji thought she was doing the right thing. She thought, if she tried 𝙝𝙖𝙧𝙙 enough, she could save everyone from themselves.But it turns out she was what they should’ve feared all along.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	✧ i’ll stay in your memory (even without a name)

**Author's Note:**

> Based entirely off the ‘R.o.S.E BLUE’ m/v. Funnily enough, I knew it was a video game collab so I thought “i don’t need to focus on storyline” and yet i got so invested i proceeded to write this lmao
> 
> title’s from the song (:
> 
> WARNINGS: murder (manslaughter?), attempted suicide (same shit from the mv, basically)

Minji truly thought she was doing the right thing. She really did.

After all, anyone would do _anything_ to save their dearest friends, and she was no exception.

✧

Suited up in nothing but her raw conviction to save the people she loved and armed with some beastly futuristic weapon that had been heavily enchanted, she thought she knew exactly what needed to be done.

Handong, the voice of reason—the vague memory desperate to keep breathing—didn’t even try to stop her once she got to a certain point. The Chinese girl from her past and future did nothing to pressure her or steer her away from the decision that she was already firmly set on.

Minji knew exactly where they’d be at. 

She had ventured to this world too many times to count, and tried everything in her books; except this. That’s why it had to work! It had to work or else!

 _< Don’t think like that,> _Handong warns. < _Think blue. Blue’s pretty. >_

“Sorry,” Minji murmurs, finger flitting over the trigger of the absurdly large gun. 

She looked up to the sky. The cityscape was stained with purple blotches, clouds of all shapes and sizes, all dyed the same color. Deep shades of eggplant purple, highlighted with magenta, speckled with lilac. It was beautiful, undoubtedly, but also equally eerie and unnerving. That feeling could not be glossed over.

It was too dark, too uniform. The entire sky was void of stars or sun. Light barely beamed but it shone from some ominous, unnamed source. It made Minji a little wary, something in her stomach nervously jerking.

“Don’t be nervous,” she told herself. “It’s for them… to get better.”

 _< Get happy,> _the friendly voice supplied cheerily in her ear. 

✧

She takes the steps hurriedly, not needing her brain to guide her.

All of the girls were drawn together, entangled and interwoven by some strange force that went by many names. Minji knew they were destined to enter this old, abandoned mansion on this specific, gloomy evening. Her feet took her swiftly, ignoring the bruising pain caused by her bloody combat boots. 

The entire way there, the streets were bare. Nothing but dark trees with black and brown leaves and the sound of the wind painstakingly plucking each leaf away from its sisters. 

Minji takes the first few steps and pushes the door carefully. 

Immediately she feels the wave of energy hit her. 

This house was very haunted and had loads of sinister energy within its walls. She had no idea what drew her friends here; but it drew her here as well.

Even without this house having swallowed her friends whole, she oftentimes found herself staring at this house, yearning to go in and explore it. She once did… attempting some forbidden practice she should’ve known nothing about. If anything, she was the one who probably hexed this place. But she didn’t _mean_ to! She just wanted to fight off the negativity; the ghosts that seemed to tail her wherever she went.

The door creaks. 

In the darkness, she can still make out a chandelier’s faint glow, trying to illuminate the long hall. 

Her shoes click towards the door at the end of the hall that calls her name. She’d been on this path far too many times; she no longer needed an escort.

Pushing the heavy, ornate door, she sees it; the familiar object.

Minji didn’t know if it was a creature or _what,_ but it looked like a giant stone, chaining the others down with invisible wires, not letting them go, let alone _think._

The _creature_ always addressed her as ‘Jiu.’ It even became a nickname. 

_Becomes_ a nickname.

She sees the other five girls circled around the stone, passed out in their wooden chairs, necks leaning at uncomfortable angles.

She strides up to the stone, trying to convince herself that she could defeat it this time once and for all. She even smirked at it, trying to tell the sentient, alien thing that she wasn’t afraid of it and she’d win this time. 

It only stared back at her, glowing brightly when she lays a hand on it.

Wind rushes, light floods, Minji _—Jiu—_ fades away somewhere.

And then she’s here.

Gahyeon’s dream world. 

Gahyeon was someone she knew to be sportive; full of laughs, and full of jokes. The maknae of their group. She was a hard worker; always tried her best in whatever she did.

But she was plagued with her own evil thoughts—thoughts that Minji was totally unaware of. 

Gahyeon had been compensating. _A lot._ For herself.

When Minji entered Gahyeon’s dream, the first thing she noticed was the junk splayed all over the barren yard. There’s no sunlight, instead a bright, artificial orange glow and the fresh scent of ash. Gahyeon surrounded herself with trash… essentially, _nothing._ She aligned herself with nothingness. Not being good enough to be anything, not worthy of being top of anything. Her throne was a shitty antique chair; but she sat on it with a light smile—an _expired_ smile—like she’d felt like this for a long time and was done fighting it. 

She was too content with being nothing.

When Minji appears before her, standing with a gun in her face, Gahyeon can bring herself to do nothing but simper, almost hopefully, as if this is what she’d wanted all along. She doesn’t even think her words are worth much, instead conveying much of everything through her different wavering smiles. Her different faces. Façades.

Minji’s lip twitches at that. She lifts her hand, aiming carefully. Gahyeon is unflinching, staring statuesque like she was a soulless robot. 

Minji only had five shots. One for each person she wanted to save.

If saving them meant violently breaking them out of these mental slave traps, she’d do it with pleasure.

Minji fired.

Immediately, she’s sent into a different world. Everything flashes before her in a whirlwind. It was a horrible, unreadable mess of Gahyeon’s dream, Minji’s memories of the the past, present, and future… and Yoohyeon’s high school.

She hated this one, passionately.

Minji herself wasn’t the best in school and her parents were never satisfied with her simply ‘not being last either.’ School was a stressful environment for her that she never wanted to step foot into again; yet, she could joke and laugh and reminisce on it because it wasn’t all bad.

For Yoohyeon it was an entirely different story. 

She hated school with every fiber of her being. She rarely went into details, but her high school in particular was prone to crushing a student’s resolve entirely. If you weren’t the best, you were automatically the worst and would never amount to anything. If your passions weren’t the standard, you were better off passionless—even _dead—_ because you’d just end up eating off your parents’ plate the rest of your life like a useless freeloader. To make matters worse, Yoohyeon was constantly ridiculed for her singing; and it didn’t even make sense because she was a _phenomenal_ singer! Jealous, angry people just took out their frustrations on her because they knew she couldn’t defend herself against it! 

Her school was full of hurt people with pretty uniforms and high test scores to mask their insecurities.

That explains why Minji arrived in a classroom, void of anybody besides the two of them. The place was in total disarray, looking like it’d been ransacked, or shaken by an earthquake. 

Haphazard scribbles of trigonometry were chalked all over the board, and the dust of chalk seemed to permeate the air, flowing as freely as oxygen itself.

In fact, the two were both sure that the chalk particles in the air were the only things free in this room.

Yoohyeon says nothing, as expected.

Again.

She doesn’t even acknowledge Minji’s presence, muttering a song as she stares though her, around her, beside her, but never _at_ her.

Her uniform is pressed and pristine; a navy blue color which matches the original layout of the classroom. It’s paired with an orange tie that was rebelliously tied into a bow. It was cute. Simple. Tranquil. A stark contrast to the school, a contrast to the loud silence that filled the room.

Four shots left and she spent one on Yoohyeon, lighting her up purple.

✧

_< I get the sense that you feel guilty… isn’t this what you **wanted** to do?> _Handong inquired.

Minji’s eyebrows furrow. Her blue eyes shone with a slew of emotions. “Not ideally, no. I… I’m shooting my friends in the face… it’s gonna hurt no matter how you slice it…”

Handong sighs. Her voice echoes within the walls of Minji’s mind. < _You can always stop if it’s eating at you like this. >_

“I can’t stop. I won’t. This is the one thing I haven’t tried yet and if it makes the others wake up… if it sends us back to that hilltop, smiling, I’ll keep going,” Minji wheezes. “Besides, I don’t think the gem would let me go even if I tried.”

 _< You’re just as stuck as them,> _Handong pointed out.

“Hell no! None of us are stuck here; you hear me, Handong?”

Behind her own eyelids, Minji can see Handong shaking her head at this. Still, she gives Minji exactly what she wants to hear. What she expected.

 _< I hear you, eonnie.> _Handong bites the inside of her cheek. Anxious. She wanted the best for them too, but something told her this wasn’t the way.

There should’ve been a better option! A clearer, cleaner-cut option! Not this shootout!

✧

Yubin’s trap confused Minji the most.

Everyone fantasized about wealth and fame at some point, which wasn’t inherently bad. 

But she knew there was something perverse about it. Something greedy. Because if all the others were being trapped in their own minds, surely Yubin was as well.

Maybe her trap was meant to look pretty; keep her brainwashed, keep her wanting to stay. 

It kept her pliant; so that even if, on the off chance, she was conscious of herself being stuck in one place, she would be too comfortable to move.

That was why there was such an absurd amount of gold at her feet, painting the entire room. 

Too much for one girl to handle. Too heavy to even dream about. 

Yubin sat on the ground, staring at Minji with some sort of judgmental glint in her eye. She had this aura that she was so big and powerful all of a sudden, because she was surrounded by wealth; as if she wasn’t the one sitting on the floor and Minji was the one standing up in heels with a gun in her face.

Yubin scoffs.

It was so unlike her.

She wasn’t the taunting type. She didn’t provoke people. 

This was her own mind fucking with her; being suaded by that damn gemstone!

“What are you doing?” Her smooth voice comes out. She was the only one to speak to her thus far; the only one who ever spoke.

“Dami,” Minji said carefully, lowering her gun. “Do you know who I am?”

The aforementioned girl picks up some coins in her hands and watches them fall. “Yes… You call me ‘Dami.’ We must be friends. You’re trying to save me.”

“Yes! Yes! Exactly!”

Yubin quickly cuts in, “But I don’t need saving. I need rest. I’ve got it here.”

“Yubin, you’ve forgotten… This isn’t you. This isn’t rest. You’re just sitting here doing nothing! Aren’t you wishing you were doing something else right now?” Minji shouts.

“Nope,” Yubin responds, flopping back onto the money pile and making coin angels.

Everything that glitters wasn’t gold; she _knew_ this!

“This is such a joke,” Minji seethed. She had no idea why—maybe it was because Dami was the only one responsive—but she tried to reason with the girl as if she wasn’t totally brain-fucked; and it visibly frustrated her when she wasn’t getting through to the other. “The Dami I know is productive. She earns what she gets. This isn’t a way to live—it sucks the value out of everything.”

“Eonnie, you’re sucking the value out of my vibe.” Yubin starts, picking up a pearl necklace laced with gold. “You want one of these? It’ll help you de-stress.”

As Minji got angrier, Yubin grinned wider. 

Minji ignores the necklace tossed at her feet, and aims. “Money doesn’t solve everything, Yubin. You know this.”

She fires.

Within the blink of an eye, she’s transferred to Bora; the most frightening scene of them all.

She’s in an empty room, with the only source of light coming from a high window, shining on her like a spotlight. The room is freezing cold yet she’s in summertime shorts and has a jacket that does nothing to warm her. On top of that, she’s chained up, arms being pulled in opposite directions, seemingly tightening the more she struggles. Her hair falls in her face, sticking to the leftover streaks of lipstick she still has left that wasn’t lost to all the screaming. Her knees are bruised from kneeling for so long.

Everything feels meticulous and monitored, having her look less like a queen and more like an experimental lab rat being played with.

To make matters worse, she flinches when she sees Minji. She has no idea why. The gun isn’t even out yet.

Upon seeing Minji, Bora fights and struggles even more, not caring about the chain digging harsh, red imprints into her skin and cutting off circulation to her hands. Her legs twitch as she itches to move, vehemently wanting to scamper off. 

She was acting as if Minji was the one who put her there, like she’d scurry off as soon as she was released.

It aches her somewhere deep in her soul that Bora even _subconsciously_ fears her like this.

The elder just wanted to release her, give her that freedom she was craving for… But she didn’t have anything to unlock the chains. 

She only held her heart and a magic bullet, wishing for the best.

“Bora,” she called, hand trembling as she saw genuine fear cross the other’s eyes, breaking their stony expression. “Please relax. Don’t be afraid.”

And then Bora disappeared, appropriately in a flash of purple light, and Minji disappeared to her final stop. 

Siyeon’s world.

As soon as Minji stumbled out of the portal and into Siyeon’s presence, the younger woman glanced at her, uncaring. She swiftly turns back to what she was looking at, with her arms folded atop her knees, staring at the static screen on the tiny, ancient television.

It was a wall of televisions behind her, all showing the same things—broadcasting error screens, blocky colors or swimming black dots of static. It was silent. Yet Siyeon was invested. She cared; but for what reason?

Wires surrounded her, encasing her, almost… _forcing_ her to look at what she was presented—static, brainlessness—and she accepted it.

She was forced to make something out of nothing, and that couldn’t work. It wasn’t humanly possible. She couldn’t meet that expectation. She needed a direction, a starting point. 

As much talent as she had, she wasn’t a god. She needed _help._

Her painted fingers toyed with the electric wires all around her, but her eyes never once left the hypnotic screen. 

She’d been here so long, her thick, dark hair was graying. It was whitening in huge patches, appearing suddenly as if she was Marie Antoinette. 

She was tormented by all the innumerable expectations around her, pressing her down—tormented beyond _words,_ so her brain decided it was best to give her silence.

Too much silence. Not enough room for much else. Not enough for inspiration. Not enough for creation. Not enough for noise, or singing, or _being!_

Breathing and existing in this world almost seemed like a chore, some fantastic feat that could only be achieved if you pushed yourself to the fullest extent. It shouldn’t be like that. Life was hard enough as is. Putting air in your lungs shouldn’t have felt like some humongous, laborious task—like a sin.

Hitting Siyeon with the last beam was too easy.

It was sad, really.

Pitiful.

She didn’t even move a muscle, didn’t react.

✧

Minji smiled as she looked up and saw the merciless sun, eyes immediately drawing back down again because of the fierce rays. The skies were bright blue and filled with puffy, innocent clouds. Everything was pretty and peaceful and authentic.

It was natural, unadulterated bliss.

No more gloomy man-made cities with skies that rained blood and ice. No more shady, demon-infested houses. No more cursed jewels and bad dreams. 

It was just her, her pale dress, and the great big meadow.

Tall blades of grass nipped at her legs as she ran to catch up with the group ahead of her—each wearing pastel, flowery, loose dresses that didn’t cage their bodies and allowed free range movement. Freedom. Peace! 

“See, Handong? I told you it’d work this time,” she says triumphantly in a whisper.

 _< I’m glad.> _The voice agrees. < _Everyone looks so happy… and even more beautiful than before, now that you’re together. Very… rose blue. >_

“Rose blue?” Minji questions with a chuckle.

 _< Yeah,> _she envisions the girl shrugging. Handong awkwardly continues, almost shyly. _<_ _ **Rare.** Like blue roses. Extremely valuable. Wonderful.>_

“Come on, Minji-eonnie! You’re behind!” Gahyeon calls out, outstretching her hand with a huge smile plastered on her face that could only be described as _pure._

Minji smiles, momentarily forgetting what she and Handong were talking about as she jogs to the rest of the girls, all laughing happily, looking at her expectantly.

Of course they don’t remember a thing.

She likes it better that way.

She nears Gahyeon, and as their hands touch, almost in slow motion, the overjoyed smile washes away from Minji’s face. She blanches as the rest of her friends seemingly vanish into thin air, leaving behind a hoard of purple butterflies, shining like stars as they flew further away.

Her heart stops.

She drops to her knees, too shocked to even cry.

She was so _certain_ this time; so sure she was doing the right thing—she thought she beat the game! 

Why? Why, then, after everything she’s tried… why did this one give her a false sense of security?

Just to blow up in her face again! 

She shouts into the empty daylight, suddenly not finding anything so beautiful anymore.

“No!” She panics, “This wasn’t supposed to happen!” 

_< Jiu-eonnie…> _ Handong starts hopelessly, _ <maybe… this was the good ending.>_

They’d been at this for way too long; she was only hurting herself watching them suffer silently over and over again. Her overwhelming perseverance was a flaw in this case. Handong didn’t like seeing it routinely defeat her like this.

“What the hell do you mean?” Minji hissed as tears dropped onto her lap. She sees something out of the corner of her eye, and only half-listens to the foreign girl who started to materialize right next to her.

 _< You’ve tried **literally** everything; and those other times you didn’t even get to see them smile.> _Handong reasons. < _You did your best. Your absolute best. They **smiled** at you this time, and even **laughed** with you!>_

“This isn’t right; it’s not,” the girl scrambles for the gun that seemingly followed her years into the future. Her hands shake as she turns the stupid thing on. But she wails when she sees there’s no more ammunition. 

Handong eases the weapon out of her hands when the other still desperately tries to press it against her temple.

 _< Jiu-eonnie, you did your best. You did **the** best. You set them free from their traps; got to see them happy. That’s all that matters in the end, right?> _Handong tries to be optimistic. She puts a rose-colored filter over her words knowing that the hard, cold truth is that Jiu killed them. 

She tosses the gun in some other direction, far away. That thing was some bastard fusion of science and magic, and although it did something, Handong wasn’t really sure it worked.

She wraps her barely-tangible arms around the other’s shoulders, swaying her rhythmically. 

“This isn’t what I wanted,” Minji stated hollowly. 

_< I know… I know. But you’ve still got me.> _Handong offers.

Minji loudly exhales, bringing her hands up to her head. She rubs her eyes viciously as she quips, “You’re not even real.”

**Author's Note:**

> yes i did weave handong into the story by making her an imaginary friend and what about it 💅🏾


End file.
